January 2024 - hoaroak

23
January

Pasturage of livestock on Exmoor

How much did it cost? The Friends continue to research the Scottish shepherds on Exmoor – how they came to be there and what their impact was. One of the first known to arrive with a cargo of Scottish sheep was Gerald Spooner who took the lease of Winterhead Farm from John Knight in 1852. More can be read about Spooner on this link Gerard Spooner – hoaroak (hoaroakcottage.org) One of the Scottish shepherds who came with Spooner was William Scott who went on to become John Knight’s Bailiff. Recently, a research partner of The Friends, based in Scotland, found an interesting newspaper advertisement from 1865 that William Scott is advertising ‘pasturage’ on Exmoor – in other words charging farmers to take their cattle: bullocks, horses, ponies, sheep with and without lambs etc., up on to the Forest of Exmoor for a fee which ranged from 2/6 to £1 per animal. Edward T MacDermot’s book, ‘A History of the Forest of Exmoor,’ gives an insight into this ancient practice and helps us to understand that the sale of pasturage to local farmers is a method to earn income from Exmoor which has a very long history. McDermot records some of the charges for pasturage. For example, in 1655, the charge would be 4d a head for sheep taken onto the Forest for pasture. Equivalent to £1.73 in modern times. MacDermot page 202 Knight’s purchase of the Royal Forest of Exmoor was part of an ambitious aim to introduce a modern agricultural reclamation project, but it seems the tried and true method of making the Forest pay – to charge local farmers to pasture their livestock on the moor – was still in place in 1865. The advert from The Taunton Courier in April 1865 shows that Bailiff William Scott would be charging a fee of 2/6 a head for sheep in 1865. Equivalent to £7.39 in modern times. Hoar Oak Cottage began life hundreds of years ago as a one roomed shepherd’s cott used for the shepherd responsible for sheep taken up onto the hills of that part of Exmoor for the summer pasturage. MacDermot Edward T, 1973, A History of the Forest of Exmoor. Image courtesy of the British Newspaper Archive © Currency converter: 1270–2017 (nationalarchives.gov.uk)

Posted by Bette Baldwin

Uncategorized

19
January

Supporting Exmoor History Research

Last year, 2023, the Friends were pleased to support research undertaken jointly by the Universities of Plymouth and Exeter which sought to reassess how the ‘reclamation’ of Exmoor under the Knights should be considered. This research, led by Leonard Baker, used information from two disciplines – archival material and paleoecological data. Material held in the Friend’s archive, particularly the digitised and transcribed sheep diaries of Scottish Head Shepherd, Robert Tait Little, fed into this research project. You can find out more about Robert on this link Robert Tait Little – hoaroak (hoaroakcottage.org) The researchers from Exeter and Plymouth felt that their findings enabled them to “position ‘reclamation’ within a sequence of long-term management practices that shaped these complex ecosystems” rather than reclamation being a one-off event of improvement during Knight’s heyday. They say that “Revaluating the ‘reclamation’ of Exmoor using archival and palaeoecological data reveals critical differences between what historical actors wanted to happen, what they believed was happening and what was actually happening to local ecosystems.” They explain that “Our work reveals that many of the schemes and projects that historians focus upon during assessments of upland ‘improvement’ were far less ecologically significant than previously assumed.” And that unfortunately, “this was not the exciting story of technological ‘progress’ and ‘conquest’ that the Knights, their agents, or subsequent commentators, wished for.” No doubt many – perhaps most? – of us have ‘bigged up’ what we or ancestors did and would like to be remembered by history in a positive light. But this new research suggests the need to sometimes reassess what the historical record tells us. The research team published in 2023 and their paper can be accessed on this link through Open Access Revolution and continuity? Reassessing nineteenth-century moorland reclamation through palaeoecological and archival research (tandfonline.com). * It is a fascinating read and the same team are currently working on a book revisiting the reclamation of Exmoor story – due for publication in 2024. For The Friends, it is a delight to be able to bring the record left behind by ordinary people, including Robert Tait Little, into this wider academic community. His descendants are thrilled that his diaries have, all these years later, been dug into to help tell the ongoing history of Exmoor. *Distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

Posted by Bette Baldwin